Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Monday we had our first snow. Now, don't get too excited, it was a very light snow. And when I say light, I mean a couple very light snow flurries. Probably shouldn't even classify it as snow, except I like snow and would like to see more of it.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

I wanted to take just a moment and wish everyone a wonderfully Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you have a very good day today and can hopefully spend time with some friends and family.

I'll get to spend the day at my parents house eating too much WONDERFUL food. It should be nice day. My sister and her family will be up too. I'm sure I'll help my parents put up their Christmas lights.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

I hate them! Absolutly hate IVR's. Occationally, they are ok and they help me out, but that is about once every 100 times.

Well, Thanks to some handy recording of some interesting short-cuts, it may be possible to skip some of the "push 1 to return to the main menu, push 2 to scratch your butt", and actualy talk to a real person.

Anyway, here is a list of commands to by-pass the IVR's and get to a real person.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

I was given some lights from my grandmother, and I wanted to get them up before going to my parents on Thursday because I'm taking everything I didn't use to them, plus some stuff my grandmother wanted them to have.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

I hung Christmas lights on the house yesterday and I'm sore. Moving and climbing the ladder, up down, up down, up down... I started around 1:30 or so, and finished around 7:30 or so. Thought the house is starting to look really good.

Hopefully I'll get the outside decorated before thanksgiving, so that will be one less thing I need to do on the weekend.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Actually, we had it last night. One of our friends is a Heat & Air guy. I called him yesterday and asked him to come out and look at it. He confirmed my theory. The exhaust fan died. Actually, a fan blade rusted off... That isn't good. New motor would cost about 30% of a new unit.

The old unit was an 80% efficiency unit. We ended up getting a 93% efficiency. Hopefully we'll see some savings there!

We got it mostly set up yesterday. We had heat last night, but there was more to do today. My friend came over today and finished up.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

I bet you are going to guess I'm going to talk about the fact it is 6:47 am and it is 31 degrees according to my digital thermometer. Well, other than bringing that up, you would be WRONG!

I woke up early this morning, so I got up and around. While sitting in the living room reading my Bible, the heater, which has been making some noises (not as bad as they were), came to a crunching halt. It sounded like someone literally threw a wrench in the fan motor.

So, I turned it off until we can get it looked at. It was 64 degrees in the house we I did that. It is currently 61.2 and dropping.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Turkey, Ham, mashed potatoes, cranberry sause (the kind in the can that comes out looking like said can), homemade rolls, sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Then you can't forget about the pie a couple hours after dinner... (like there room for the pie right after dinner)

Then there is going through the sales cataloges and figuring out the shoping schedule for early Friday morning. Usually, when I come home on Friday, I've got most of my Christmas presents bought.

We already have 6 Christmas presents bought.We still have about 9 presents to buy, plus finish up my wife, son, daughter, and my wife may have more shopping for me.

A cold front is to come through, to that should help the weather get back down where it should be and really help get me into the mood.

Today, I woke up early and once I get to work I have about 10+ things I HAVE to get done, and it will be hard getting them all done before the end of the day.Tomorrow, we are going to my parents place. My sister and her kids are up. This will be the first time I've seen it since I helped move them in, and definitely the first since they've unpacked.Wednesday is Church.Thursday, finish getting ready for my daughters 17th birthday party.Friday, my daughters 17th birthday party! We are having a Mexican extravaganza as I put it. Home make corn tortillas, cheese dip, home made guacamole and who knows what else. She's planning on inviting a lot of her friends over.Saturday, my sons last soccer game this season.

Anyway, this should be a very busy, and hopefully good week... If we can get to the end of it.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Wow, now this was an interesting article! Imagine, being on a cruise with your sweet heart, and while on the cruise, pirates attack your ship, and try to board. They didn't use cannons and swords though, they used rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.

Well, that is what happened it Seabourn Cruise Lines' "Spirit" Saturday morning as they travelled off the shore of Somalia.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

As I discussed yesterday, I'm working on another computer ravaged by viruses and spyware.

Well, after finally getting the machine cleaned up, I installed Windows XP SP2.After the install, the screen went black after it got past the windows screen.I finally went in through Safe Mode (F8) and the only thing I noticed was there were 2 video adapters installed. I disabled the on board video card, and all was good.

Well, with that part.

I went in to make sure that the firewall settings were turned on. Not only were they off, but they were grayed out. What I found was a program (probably a spyware program) put in the following 2 registry keys, both under the WindowsFirewall folder. With these keys disabled, even if you put Windows Firewall on your machine, it will not work, and it isn't easy to figure out. (I've spent hours.)

Under normal circumstances, the keys do not exist, so just delete the keys, reboot, and all is good. Well for me they were anyway.

As always, if you don't know what you are doing, don't mess with this, you screw up your registry, and you'll have a very bad day.

Friday, November 04, 2005

You've heard me complain before about viruses and spyware and how to fix it. Well, I'm working on someone else's computer from my church. They had close to 350 viruses and about 113 spyware entries.

They had a virus scanner, but from what I could tell, they never updated the software, or hadn't in a very long time. Task manager would not even open, everytime you tried, the spyware/viruses would kill it.

Luckily, I had Spybot and AVG burned onto a disk with the latest updates. So cleaning this up has been better than when I worked on my grandfathers machine a few months ago.

I'm working on installing Service Pack 2 for XP right now. Once I turn on the firewall, that should help a lot. Still have a lot of work to do, but the machine is working so much better now. Will be even nicer once I'm finished.

You know what's so funny about that title? For me, today, it was true.

I just dropped my boy off at daycare, and was headed to work. Just as I was getting on the highway, I noticed a leaf and what appeared to be some kind of worm between the hood and the front left quarter pannel.

As I glanced at it, the worm started to come out, then back in, then out again, then back in, and finally completely in.

"That's a mouse!" I thought to myself.Well, I couldn't take the suspense, so I got off the highway and pulled into Walmart, popped the hood, and there, in the engine, was a cute little grey mouse!

"Get out of there!" I screamed at him, and to my horror, he crawled down into the wires, hoses, etc. never to be seen again.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

My wife and son went to a spook hay ride Saturday night and got home about midnight. After church Sunday morning, my wife wanted a nap, so my son and I stayed up and played, and tried to let her have her nap. By the time she woke up, I realized we didn't have any pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns. So I grabbed the kids, and we ran off to Walmart to get 2. When we got to Walmart, no pumpkins outside... that's ok, inside we go. None there either unless you count the bitty ones, and they don't make good jack-o-lanterns. So, we run to Home Depot since they were suppose to have some... none there either. Ok, I will not be deterred, but we are running out of time. Off to Reasors we go, but on our way, we passed an Albertson. Let give them a try. We pull, in and find some.... YEA! The kids pick out theirs, we pay and head home. Because we are in a hurry, I take a turn just a bit to fast, and my daughters pumpkin rolled across the floor of the car, and the stem broke off... I was in trouble. She has spend a lot of time looking for the perfect pumpkin. We get home, and while they are getting ready for the Harvest festival, I hot glued the stem back on the pumpkin.Sunday night, our church had a Harvest Festival at the Skiatook Community Center. It was a lot of fun. We had a good turn out. Everyone was impressed with my boys costume.

As we were leaving, I told my wife that all his costume needed was a few lights on it, since astronauts usually have some sort of lights on their space suites. So off to Walmart we go.

She bought several of the rings you wear that when you press, they flash. We put 3 on his costume. It was cute.

Monday... Halloween... I left work later than I wanted. It was a busy day. When I get home, we start working on the kids jack-o-lanterns before the costume parade downtown. Just as we start I get paged. When I was done, so where the kids. :(

We got to the parade, and it was a lot of fun. We had so many complements on his costume it was really cool. My wife did such a wonderful job on it. She is so talented that way. :)

After walking down main street and seeing all sorts of costumes and getting some candy, we went to the fair barns for free hot dogs and hot chocolate. Then they had the costume contest. My boy was so excited about entering the contest. There were so many good costumes in the 4 & 5 year old age bracket. He won his bracket!!! He got $15 cash for his win! Which, as he has told several people, he plans on spending on a new video game. :)

Afterward, we hit more of the businesses in town and the church next to our house, then we went off the my in-laws to go trick-or-treating in their neighbor hood. My son got several pounds of candy when it was all said and done.